


Defense Against The Dark Farts

by Jo_busch_got_booty



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 11:59:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9724859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_busch_got_booty/pseuds/Jo_busch_got_booty
Summary: Taako Taaco is given the position of defense against the dark arts teacher





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dearfriendicanfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearfriendicanfly/gifts).



“Is that the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?” Ron asked around a mouthful of roast pork. He nodded his head toward the front of the Great Hall. Next to Snape sat a tall-looking wizard with a series of clothes that should clash, but instead looked fantastic. A bright pink hat, with an intricate design that appeared to change every time one focused on it, a brightly viridescent robe, trimmed with gaudy green, and the most outrageously beautiful face that any of them had ever seen. Even Lockhart would have envied his beauty. Snape looked unenthusiastic at best about sitting beside him.  
  
Without looking up from her copy of Travels with Trolls, Hermione tossed her napkin across the table. “Yes, it is. Now please chew with your mouth closed.”  
  
“How did you even know?” Ron asked, and Harry snorted. “It’s not like you were paying attention.”  
  
“I answered your question, didn’t I?” Before Ron could stumble to think of a witty enough comeback, Dumbledore stood and a hush fell over the Great Hall. He gave his usual speech, they sang the Hogwarts theme, and he introduced the new professor without an ounce of regret about needing to hire a new professor for the same position for the third year in a row, Professor Taaco.

•••••••••••••

  
From the first class, Hermione didn’t like Professor Taaco. The boys, however, couldn’t agree.  
  
“It’s too early in the morning for this,” Taaco greeted. “Get this. Wizards don't have coffee.”  
  
“Coffee?” Ron whispered to Harry.  
  
“Okay. Hi, I'm professor Taaco and I'm here to teach you fuckers magic, or whatever. I'm not really sure, I lost a bet.” Again, he was dressed like he had gotten dressed in the dark-- his hair was pulled back into a messy bun, his clothes still clashed horribly, but he didn’t look groggy. “We’re going to learn about…” He looked down at the sheet of parchment in his hand. “Obscuri. You, in the front. What’s your name?”  
  
The class tilted its collective head. Eyebrows raised, and Harry pointed to his chest. “Me, Professor?”  
  
“Yeah, you. Your name?”  
  
“Harry Potter, Sir.”  
  
The professor looked nonplussed. “What do you know about Obscuri?”

  
Harry blinked. “I don’t know anything about them, Professor.” There were a few snickers from the Slytherin side of the room, and predictably Hermione’s hand shot up. Professor Taaco nodded at her.

  
“They're the soul of a young wizard whose magic was repressed!” She announced. “Mostly from the seventeenth century, but there was a case in America only seventy years ago.”

  
“Yeah,” the professor agreed. “They're just a giant murderous dust cloud.”

  
Hermione opened her mouth to correct him, but Professor Taaco had already turned toward the Slytherin side of the room and begun questioning Michael Robinson on the history of obscuri.

  
“And this,” the professor announced, pulling an umbrella out from under his cloak, “is how you defeat one.”

••••••••

It didn't take very long for the rumors to spread. At first they were silly, he was good friends with Ollivander and preferred to blend in with muggles, he shared a fashion sense with Hagrid— and then Draco got whiff of it.

  
After one particularly grueling argument with the Professor—

  
“Professor Taaco—”

  
“It’s pronounced Taaco.”

  
“Yes, Taaco.”

  
“No, not Tacko, Taaco.”

  
“Taaco.”

  
“Taaco.”

  
“Taaco. I'm telling you, it’s Taaco”—

  
He told Patty Patil, “My father says he got expelled for failing. That’s why he uses an umbrella.”  
  
Another time he said, “I heard he had his wand broken because a muggle found it.”

  
Once it was, “He let a giant spider in the school in his third year, that's why he doesn't have a wand, they kicked him out.”

  
And one time the professor overheard a rumor being spread that he wasn't actually a wizard after all, just a squib, and he replied, “I broke my wand fighting an ogre. But my umbrella eats wands for strength, so I guess it was an upgrade.”

  
“Fought an ogre?” Draco asked skeptically before he could stop himself. The professor didn't miss a beat.

  
“I was being inaugurated into—” instead of words, the students could have sworn they had heard static. “So how ‘bout minding your fuckin’ business?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako is not good a subtly

It was amazing how quickly news spread. Within the first month of teaching, most of the third year class knew about Taaco Taako’s aversion to dementors and the use of them in schools. Well, there were rumors, and there was the fact that he wasn’t very subtle about it.

“What the fuck?” he had asked McGonagall, right outside the door to her classroom. “What are you putting the kids in danger to keep them safe from? Is it that lich--”

McGonagall, much to her credit, shushed him at this and pulled him inside her classroom, but it was too late to undo the irreparable damage. There were at least three groups of students from varying houses (approximately five gryffindors, three Ravenclaws, six Slytherins, and two hufflepuff), including but not limited to the Potter trio, Neville Longbottom, the latter half of Crabbe and Goyle, and Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.

“What’s a lich?” Harry asked Hermione the moment the door had shut behind the two professors. She was already flipping through a book.

“A lousy witch?” Ron suggested.

“Lucky Snitch?” Harry offered.

“There's nothing on it,” Hermione said, and Ron shook his head.

“No that doesn't work, the last sound is ‘—ich.’” She didn't laugh.

“How can this be? This book has every magical creature in it.”

“We can check in the library,” Harry suggested. The crowd around them was already thinning, deterred by the absence of promised drama.

“Do you think anybody has ever spoken to McGonagall like that?” Hermione asked once they'd turned the corner away from the entrance of her classroom. “I don't even think You Know Who would try it.”

“What do you think he's talking about, though?” Ron motioned back with his head. “Putting us in danger?”

“Maybe the dementors?” Harry seemed unnerved just mentioning them. “After what happened on the train…”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ron agreed.

•••••••••••••

  
“There's nothing in here!” Hermione threw her hands up dramatically, and pulled away from the book she had been poring over. “This is the fifth book this afternoon and there's nothing!”

A few people at nearby tables leaned over and shushed her violently.

“Do you think it’s in the restricted section?” Harry asked. “We could try to sneak in again—”

“Oh, because it worked so well the first time.”

“Fair point,” Ron admitted.

“Maybe it was a figure of speech?” Harry suggested. “Have you checked a magical dictionary?”

“There's nothing,” Hermione insisted again.

•••••••••••

  
“Aight, today we’re going to learn about fighting dementors,” Professor Taaco announced, his tone defiant. “I'm not bringing one in the classroom, because fuck that, but I found mannequins in the classroom, so we’ll use those.”

He pulled a practice dummy from the corner of the room and set it in the middle. He muttered something under his breath— a frankenstein’s monster of syllables Hermione had never heard— and pointed his umbrella at it. Immediately, it took the form of a Dementor. Harry pulled away instinctively.

“Alright, who wants to try casting Magic Missile first?” 

••••••••••

“I'm telling you,” Hermione insisted over dinner that night, “there's no such spell as magic missile!”

“You cast it, didn't you?”

“Of course I did, but it’s not real, and I could have sworn I heard something rattling in his pockets.” Hermione thought for a moment, “it sounded like dice.”

“Dice?” Ron asked.

“Yeah, like, for Monopoly,” Harry supplied, “or Trouble.”

“Wha—”

“They're board games. You roll dice to see how far you move.”

“Are you suggesting that our Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher is secretly the thimble from Monopoly?” Harry asked.

“No, I'm just saying it’s weird.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a large number of places I've written this chapter. Let's review:  
> During a DND session, which I was DMing  
> Outside of a church that is not mine  
> Outside of voice lessons  
> My voice teacher's bathroom  
> Stuck in traffic on Route 73 Bc no one knows how to drive in the snow


	3. Chapter 3

It was early on in the day of the second Hogsmead trip that Harry realized Professor Taaco could see through the invisibility cloak. There Harry was, tucked safely into the corner of The Three Broomsticks, huddled under the cloak with his butterbeer (it was actually fogging up his glasses quite nicely), when he felt someone’s eyes on him. He looked around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Students were hunched over textbooks, teachers were quietly discussing things, Hermione and Ron were in a heated debate over whether dice were  _ actually  _ a fair way to determine the outcome of games. 

 

Ron was  _ really  _ stuck on the dice. 

 

So stuck, in fact, that he’d done research trying to find spells that do similar things. None of them had ever been considered unbiased enough to be used in wizarding casinos or gambling rings because they always tended to favor the caster and, American casinos especially, had begun losing money and losing it fast. This, apparently, meant that  _ all  _ dice were like this, not just magical ones, which prompted Hermione to explain the mathematical probabilities that went along with dice, in fact, being fair, which made Harry want to risk splinching himself and illegally Apparate the hell out of Hogsmead. 

 

“I’m going to head to Honeydukes,” he said, hopping out of his seat. Much to his chagrin, the chair moved backward, squealing against the hardwood. He froze. The tables around them went silent. 

 

Ron glanced, briefly, at Harry, then smiled sheepishly and put his hand up in an apologetic wave. “my bad,” he said. “had some cursed chili last night my magic’s been  _ all  _ over the place today.”

 

A few people sneered, disgusted. Hermione kicked him under the table. Harry slipped out the front door with a couple who were too busy putting their hands all over each other to notice a strange breeze on their way out. Sometimes, Harry was rather grateful for young love’s constant need to be shown. It meant no one was ever paying attention to him. 

 

He followed the scent of melted sugar all the way down the street. As usual, he snuck into a madhouse. Students were everywhere. The store was so well stocked, candies were practically falling off of the shelves. There were hundreds of boxes of every flavored beans. Lollipops that turned your who mouth your favorite color, licorice ropes that made your hair turn into candy for 6 hours, chocolate frogs, candy bracelets. It was Harry’s favorite store. Plus, it was so busy that no one would really notice if he accidentally bumped into them. 

 

Okay, that last part was untrue. There were a few occasions where he bumped into a girl who had a boyfriend and the boyfriend assumed that it had been the guy standing behind them, innocently looking for pumpkin pasties, and that he’d been, as the Americans say, 'copping a feel.’ it had started a fight that Mcgonagall herself had needed to break up, and Harry hadn't seen either of them at meals for nearly three days. 

 

Another time, he’d stepped hard enough on the back of someone’s robes to rip them off only to reveal that there had been  _ nothing _ underneath. That started less of a fight and more of a ridicule. Harry had never felt so confused and guilty in his life. 

 

But  _ usually  _ no one noticed. 

 

He wandered through the aisles, looking without any real intent to buy. Buying would mean needing to get Hermione or Ron, slipping them the money, and then making them wait in line to buy it for them. It worked okay for drinks, but it was an iffy plan in a store like this. 

 

Harry spent so much time as a kid eating Dudley’s leftovers that it was hard not to drool at the sweets, though. Chocolate, and fruit flavors, and candies that exploded in your mouth like fireworks. 

 

He was so distracted by everything he didn't realize he was in the middle of the aisle until he walked directly into professor Taaco. Harry froze, breath stilted, but the professor didn't skip a beat. “oh shit, excuse me Chosen Dude.” And then continued on as if he hadn’t run into thin air. 

 

That is, of course, unless he hadn't. Harry rushed to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror above the sink. A kid at the urinal damn near had a heart attack as the door slammed open, and he stared at the doorway, confused, as the door closed. Harry had no reflection in the mirror. He still wore the cloak. He was also, almost definitely, fucked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remembered this existed about 20 minutes after taking NyQuil and immediately began writing. I believe that this is very evident. Please enjoy as I slowly get taken down by the miracle sleep drug.


	4. Chapter 4

“What do you mean he could see you?” Hermione, surprisingly, seemed unphased by this comment. She didn’t look up from her book as Harry relayed the adventures of the day before. It was Ron who asked this question, eyes wide, hands planted on the edge of the table, leaning over his plate just enough to have the front of his robes dip into his mashed potatoes. Sheepishly, Harry pointed to it, and he pulled away, cursing under his breath. Hermione offered a glance over, muttered a cleaning spell and waved her wand, then went back to whatever it was she was reading. 

“I mean, he knew I was there.” Harry lowered his voice. “I was under the cloak, I know it for a fact, I looked in a mirror afterward.”

“I mean, we have learned that mirrors lie,” Ron said quietly. Harry ignored him.

“But he ran into me and he said, ‘excuse me, Chosen Dude.’” 

Hermione pulled a face. “Chosen Dude?”

“Oh, so you are listening?” Ron shovelled another forkful of food into his mouth. 

“I can do two things at once, you know,” she told him. She motioned toward the Ravenclaw table. Most of them were buried in books. Some of them were playing a strange looking game with dice and books and what looked like tiny figurines. They looked very into it. One or two of them were writing. A fun bunch, they were. “Some people like to actually pay attention to schoolwork, and things that aren’t making a big deal of the weirdest professor at school being slightly weirder than usual.”

“Then go sit with them! We’ll all be happier!”

“Hermione, there was only one other person I know of who could see through the cloak,” Harry pointed out. He motioned to his eye. Well, actually he tried to go cross-eyed first, but he was actually very bad at that so he pointed to his eye instead because it hurt less and he looked slightly less stupid. Ron looked at him like he was mad. Hermione rolled her eyes. Harry was starting to get moody. 

“It could have been shifted off a little bit. Or you could have said something when you ran into him. There’s a lot of reasons that you might have been seen. Just be more careful next time, and make sure he doesn’t report you to Dumbledore. You could get into huge trouble for this.”

“I think it could be a big deal,” Ron piped up. He spit out some ham as he spoke. Hermione sighed, and wiped the piece that had landed on her book to the table in disgust. “What if You-Know-Who is back? Or,” Ron winked at Harry behind Hermione’s back as he said this, “What if there’s a spell that allows people to see through invisibility cloaks? Don’t you think that’s something we-- Harry should know about?”

Harry glanced over at Professor Taaco. He had an array of seasonings in front of him, and he was chowing down on what looked like a gourmet hot dog. He gave no indication that he thought any body was talking about him, or that he would care if they were. He didn’t even talk to any of the other professors, just ate his fancy hot dog in silence. 

“Fine.” Hermione’s annoyance dragged Harry back to the conversation. “I’ll look into spells that allow you to see through invisibility cloaks,” she said. “The next time I go into the library. Will that make you happy?”

“Very,” Ron agreed.

“Thanks, Hermione.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be longer but the bell rang and I guess it was fate


End file.
